How Come U Don’t Call Me (Chords)

Prince had some really juicy chord moves. This song (originally a Prince B-side before Alicia Keys made it a big hit) has two of my favourite chord moves of all time.

The first is C – Ab6 – Abaug – F. I always think of the interval between C and Ab as the Goldfinger move. But making in an Ab6 replaces the bombast with a melancholy edge.

Secondly is the ascending notes against a Dm7 chord at the end of the chorus and bridge. The downside is that it’s pretty tricky. A simpler option is just to play Dm7 for the first four chords in the run then replace the last chord with 0010.

Warning: Capo at the first fret if you want to play along with either version.

Suggested Strumming

You can be pretty minimal with the strumming. In the verses and intro you can just use one down-strum per chord for everything but Fadd9 where you do three up-strums. Alternatively you can strum the same rhythm used in the tab below.

In the chorus and bridge I like to do double-time down-strums up to the D chord run at the end where I do one strum per chord then a down-up on the last chord. Like this: